All Seasons
by lovelyinherbones
Summary: A life has many facets and many dimensions, though never follows more than one path. A series of one-shots. AUs, alternate and missing scenes, drabbles.
1. Fire and Ice

A/N 1:_ Hello, all my loverly readers (or otherwise silent lurkers). I know that when I replied to all of your precious reviews on Kingdom Come, I told you that I would be updating within a few days of posting the first chapter. Alas, that fic has me so completely overwhelmed and anxious already that I needed to take a few day's break, and then that few days turned into a few weeks, and then it was exams and then I had to pack my entire life into the back of a Chrysler Aspen and move 900 miles, and I suck. So these little bitties are to tide you over, bribe you to stay on board for my other whatsits, and to PLEASE forgive me for all-but abandoning Kingdom Come, especially so soon after it had begun (though I promise that I'm working on it). I recently restructured and am completely rewriting it! Which is good news, because the first version sucked. I'm wicked sorry, but please read, review, and enjoy these little stories._

_Anywho...this will be a set of little vignettes, sort of. They're a little longer than typical drabbles, and a little shorter than typical one-shots. As in, it is physically impossible for me to write anything less than 400 or 500 words, so I can't rightly claim that these are drabbles. These are ideas that strike me when I'm cooking, when I'm on the tube, when I'm listening to music. Basically when I'm breathing. They won't always be happy, sometimes angsty, sometimes sad, just a wide range of topics and emotions and __**they are in no way shape, or form related**__. This collection is named for a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I really hope you enjoy. And sorry for the extraneously long AN._

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A/N 2:_ This one in particular is set post-Twilight - there's an entire summer we missed out on between Twilight and New Moon, and this is a little bit that was inspired by the wet, sweltering heat Buffalo was experiencing at the time of its writing, and is dedicated to my dear friend who saved me from a certainly horrendous lab grade on a certain Thursday evening, and to whom I promised something new to be posted.__There'll be a few more of these "missing summer" bits in the future, I think, including, but not limited to, Edward's birthday._

**Fire and Ice.**

The air was hot and sticky and increasingly uncomfortable. The humidity in the atmosphere was nearly suffocating, infesting every crevice of the room and every breath inhaled with its intense asphyxiating powers. It was the warmest day Forks had seen in years - the heat index was nearly one hundred ten degrees.

"Stupid global warming," Bella muttered angrily.

Bella laid on top of her light, cotton summer sheets, trying her hardest to be perfectly still and not use any energy or produce any extraneous heat. Her father had offered to set up the single-unit air conditioner in her room, but she had declined on the grounds of not wanting to add to the problem that was causing this weather in the first place. Truthfully, she'd not wanted to block the only window in her room with a large, boxy air conditioner when her own personal air conditioner used the same window to sneak inside every evening - she'd rather suffer than lock Edward out.

Suddenly, the aforementioned cooling contraption sprang agilely through the wide-open window, his hair wind swept, messy and sticking up in every direction imaginable, but so sexy that Bella felt her already sky-rocketing body temperature inch up a few more degrees.

"Edward!" she cried, startled, not helping herself as she shot upright on her bed. He'd been absent the entire morning, off at some nearby nature reserve hunting large game. The typical shot of intensive relief splintered through her veins, the fist of dull despair that clenched her heart releasing its iron grip. She sighed, happy again for the first time in hours. Plus, seeing as his body temperature was a third of what hers was, he would serve once again as a perfect cooler for overheated flesh.

"Oh, Edward," she sighed again, eased. He was immediately at her side, pressing his icy lips to her forehead, and she believed she'd never felt anything quite as delicious.

"Lay down with me," she said, trying futilely to move his marble arms down to the surface of the bed. One of his perfect eyebrows arched, suspicious, as he held her mostly at an arms distance.

"Oh, not like _that_," she said chidingly, "I'm hot." His second eyebrow joined his first near his hairline, and she immediately realized her mistake. "You jerk! It's a hundred degrees outside!"

He chuckled softly, sweetly, his cold breath fluttering through her hair and cooling the sweat on her scalp. Her fingers dug into the fabric of his thin black v-neck t-shirt, trying to bring herself closer to him in an attempt to lessen the effects of the heat stroke she felt coming on.

"I'm just kidding," he said, smirking at his own little joke. He let the tips of his fingers trail down the line of her jaw, leaving behind a path of fiery sensations on her flesh, completely defeating the purpose of lessening the heat flowering throughout her body. "Hmm..." he mumbled, "You _do_ feel warmer than normal."

She glared heartily at him, chagrined but eager to chill her burning skin. He finally pulled her into the circle of his arms and laid them both down on her damp pillow, at long last granting her assuagement. She pressed herself completely and totally against him, winding her legs through his, curling her fingers through his silk-like hair, and pressing her face in between his shoulder and his cheek.

She sighed contentedly, experiencing every cell in her body both burn and freeze at the same time, the former sensation erupting from the center of her heart and spreading throughout her body like wildfire, the latter at long last alleviating her skin-deep fever.

"Thank you," she murmured, relieved.

_fin._


	2. Grace

A/N: _This is set post-Eclipse. Bella is a young vampire, and is at times left behind while Edward goes to school or otherwise departs without her. I've had this image of Bella and Jasper walking through the forest together in my head for who-knows how long. I think they'd be good friends, if he weren't so afraid of the threat she posed to him. And I love Jasper. That's all that needs to be said._ _Oh, and this fic was named for a song. :) Guess the artist and I'll give you a prize._

**Grace.**

The forest air was silent and sweet - the animals that naturally avoided us out of instinct remained curled in their respective homes and boroughs, cuddling their young and sleeping contentedly in the glow from the early morning sun. The dew from the thunderstorms that passed last night still clung tightly to the leaves of the trees, refusing to drop until a breeze dislodged them and sent them spiraling towards the ground.

Jasper was serene as we walked, slowly and comfortably, through the tall, ancient trees and waving ferns. The cold air was pleasant and not at all uncomfortable to our typically icy flesh. We strolled at a comparatively deliberate pace, picking our way gently through the undulating green.

Jasper had eventually become a true friend to me without the barrier of my encroaching mortality between us. He was a companion that I could rely on when Edward was away and I wanted peace from the constant, uninterrupted life of our shared home. I was calm and tranquil in his presence, without the need for his subtle power and with no sticky residue of control left in its wake.

It was really refreshing, in a way. He had an interesting combination of traits from the other three men in our household - he was understanding and compassionate, like our father, had a brilliant sense of humor, like our raucous brother, and was incredibly perceptive, like my husband. He never asked me what he could do to help, to make me less anxious while Edward was gone, as his own wife sometimes did. He comprehended that more often than not, all I needed was a friend - a _quiet_ friend.

Suddenly, I was ripped from my musings as I caught my toe on a rotting, rangy shrub root, nearly falling flat on my face, but catching myself on a nearby elm trunk in time - there is a hole in the side of that tree, now. I was embarrassed - the one thing I had not inherited from the impressive laundry list of vampiric skills and attributes was grace; It seemed as though I was doomed to forever be a klutz. Literally. Forever.

Jasper stared at me, his eyes wide and startled by my actions, now that my movements were just as quick and abrupt as his were. He seemed surprised at me, that even after months of living as one of the walking dead, that my movements had yet to blossom into the dance-like gait that the rest of them possessed. His brief confusion melted into a wide grin at my expense, lighting up his leonine features with amusement.

He snorted and laughed loudly at me, as I was still slightly bent at the waist, rather startled myself, and then continued walking. I glared at his retreating back with chagrin, and followed.

_fin._

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_**I couldn't decide if it was more unrealistic to have Bella be miraculously graceful or still clumsy, so I flipped a coin and wrote a fic. :)**_


	3. Devil In The Water

A/N: _Oh, the angst. This idea has been bobbing around in my head for awhile now, and I wish it could have been a bit more intense, but certain necessary explanations did draw it out a bit and lessen its concentration._ _Anyways, please review. :)_

**Devil In The Water.**

We were sitting in a cozy booth in an old, out of the way café in downtown Buffalo, enjoying the sweet music of a local independent radio station and pretending to sip coffee.

The artist we were there to see was late, and had not yet arrived with his band in their old rusty van to perform. The place was practically empty, save the barista, two girls canoodling and murmuring words of devotion in a back corner, and Edward and myself.

Edward and I were talking, no particular direction in our conversation. We chatted about our plans to go to England in the next month with Carlisle and about which colleges I might like to attend now that I had unlimited freedom and time. The soft, comfortable silences between sentences were just as frequent as our random bursts of babbling.

The bell above the door jingled, indistinguishable to human ears over the cacophony of indie music, and I glanced up excitedly over Edward's shoulder to see if the band had arrived.

A pretty girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen, blew through the door, a windy wintery gust following behind her and blowing over a few flyers on the opposite side of the café. She seemed unperturbed by the cold and thick white snow sticking to her grey wool peacoat, and I had learned to recognize this immunity to sub-zero temperatures not as a characteristic of undead beings, but one of native Buffalonians. She smiled kindly at the barista as she pulled off her coat and turned to wait for whom I assumed was a companion following behind her.

The details of the girl's face and of her appearance are etched into my mind now more permanently than any other memory that has befallen me since my ascension to immortality.

She was tall and curvy and carried herself with a straight, relaxed, and confident posture. She had a prosaic beauty about her, with shining, thick, shoulder-length brown hair streaked through with dark golden highlights that could come from nowhere except Mother Nature herself.

No feature of hers, however, had struck me in retrospect quite as heavily as her beautiful eyes. They were delicately curved at the corners, almost almond shaped, and were an ambiguous shade of green fused with blue and grey. They were interesting eyes that had the oddest quality of looking like sparkling stars, though I realized this only in hindsight.

I say in hindsight, because the moment that her petite blonde friend entered the café and brought with her a howl of wind that blew the girl's scent off of her skin and towards me, I killed her.

She smelled strictly and noxiously of tuberose and orchids and crushed cashmere. Before even Edward could realize what I was doing, my legs had launched me from my chair and my teeth had sunk into the fragrant flesh of her throat, without even a moment's hesitation. The typical tug of my conscience was absent; I ignored Edward trying to pull me off of her, too. My mind was following much, much more slowly than my body was reacting.

As I pulled back, I felt the residue of blood smeared across my lips, and the bloodlust was satiated and calming and taking the backseat to horror and repugnance.

The girl's face was even prettier ice white and bloodless and dead. Her eyes were flat and glassy and forest green.

Her little friend opened her mouth to scream, but before a noise could pass her lips she, too, was dead. I watched as Edward laid her gently down to the floor, and glanced to see that the barista and two lovers in the back were dead as well.

They'd all born witness to me draining the succulent life from this girl, and had thus been victim to the consequences of the laws of our world.

I looked to Edward and wanted to weep and explode. He looked immensely guilty and disappointed - in me, in himself, in our life together. Regardless, I was the cause of the pain that shimmered like a mirage in his own blackened orbs. The fact that he was affected just as strongly by the girl's blood as I was did not help my shattered state of mind. He'd been able to control himself, and I had not. I'd been solely responsible for not one death, but five. _I_ wanted to die.

I am a monster.

_fin._


	4. Home Life

A/N: _Okay, I'm very very close to having the next chapter of Kingdom Come done. In the mean time, I'm updating my one-shots. This was written several weeks ago, so don't think that I don't have my priorities in order. And, all that needs to be said: both human, and __this was written long before the ridiculousness that was BREAKING DAWN__._

**Home Life.**

Edward stared, in shock, at the list I had just handed to him. It was color coded, organized by the stores and shops in which he would find every item and then cross-referenced by alternate sources. His face drooped, looking at the six different places he would be going to in order to satiate me. I felt guilty, momentarily, but then remembered that out of the two of us, he had it the easiest.

Suddenly, his face cleared of all chagrin and confusion, and he looked triumphant.

"Oh, are we having a party?" he exclaimed, relieved that he'd seemingly have a fun purpose for driving around town all morning. Traffic was hell in Seattle this time of year, and he'd spend at least two-thirds of the time in his car, wrestling with parking places and rude drivers and stop lights.

"Uhm, no..." I said hesitantly. His face fell again, disappointed that there would essentially be no reward for his unpleasant adventure.

"Bella," he moaned, "Decaf English breakfast tea from Premiere, Marcie's homemade fig cookies, chocolate espresso cupcakes from Chuck's bakery, Mrs. Kim's stir-fry sauce - isn't Mrs. Kim out of town!?" he said, eager to shave off one or two stops from the asinine list. I scowled. I was barely permitted to leave my bed, let alone the house, so he would just have to suffer through it.

"No, she got back two weeks ago," I said, a mix of indignation and mild guilt flavoring my voice. He sighed, scanning down to the bottom of the list where the regular grocery store items were highlighted in blue.

"_Three_ jars of mayonnaise? What, are you going to eat it straight from the jar?" he chuckled, unaware of how right he really was. My sheepish grin alerted him to the fact that that was exactly what I planned on doing. Cravings are cravings, and I had no control over them.

"Eww," he said, an unpleasant expression marring his perfect, angelic features. I laughed, absentmindedly reaching up to stroke the tiny patch of grey developing at his temple. There were no more than ten silver hairs flowing from his hairline, but they drove me wild nonetheless. Edward's face softened, and his glowing green eyes melted me from the inside out. He leaned down to press his lips to mine in a slow, lazy kiss that still set my flesh off in a storm of electric potency, making me feel like I was going to light up and crawl right out of my skin.

I smiled contentedly as I felt his hand curve around the wide arc of my stomach, resting his hand in its usual spot next to my right hip. A fluttery kick from a tiny foot hit the spot beneath the muscle and sinew directly below his palm. He broke our kiss and buried his head in the crook of my neck, breathing in the scent of his favorite lotion of mine, which I'd lathered on generously that morning in efforts to make him more maliable to my demands.

"I love you," he murmured, finally turning away to put on his grey peacoat, wrap a tan cashmere scarf around his pale neck, and grab the keys to our newly purchased Volvo station wagon, "I'll be back...someday."

I giggled as he pressed a final, chaste goodbye kiss to my lips. As he walked through the door, I saw him shake his head and heard him mutter, "Pregnant women."

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_Please review!_


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